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Free Will Astrology
horoscopes for week of December 4, 2008

Aries (March 21-April 19)

The European Union has had rules banning the sale of ugly carrots with knobby protrusions, cucumbers that are grossly curved, and equally unaesthetic specimens of 24 other fruits and vegetables. Recently that changed, however. The stiff standards were relaxed. "It makes no sense to throw perfectly good products away, just because they are the 'wrong' shape," said the EU's commissioner for agriculture. I suggest you make a metaphorically similar shift, Aries. It's time for you to expand your capacity to welcome some fine, useful things that happen to look a bit imperfect.

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"The task of genius, and humanity is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously." —Henry Miller
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

In the Broadway play "Passing Strange," the narrator praises the healing power of mysterious songs, saying: "You know when the music goes right over your head, bypasses your mind, and strengthens the part of you that's most beautiful?" That's the kind of nourishment I encourage you to seek out in the coming week, Taurus. You need soul-toning experiences that elude your rational understanding -- encounters with wise animals, waking dreams, unpredictable love, exotic music, and twilight whispers that blissfully boggle your imagination.

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We will ignore the cult of doom and gloom and embrace the cause of zoom and boom. We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate, and summon the brilliance to praise and create. No matter how upside-down it all may temporarily appear, we will have no fear because we know this secret: Life is crazily in love with us—wildly and innocently in love with us. The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

According to the imaginative reporters at the Weekly World News, the devil doesn't sit by passively as people beseech God for help and consolation. Using his own version of stealth technology, the evil one "intercepts or jams" up to one-third of all prayers on their way heavenward. Timid and fuzzy prayers are the easiest for him to block. Just in case there's a grain of truth in this claim, Gemini, take special measures when you send out appeals for assistance in the coming days. You need and deserve attention from higher powers, both the earthbound and divine kind. To ensure that the devil (or one of his surrogates) can't interfere, formulate your messages concisely and communicate them with crisp confidence.

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Pronoia means that even if we can’t see and don’t know, primal benefactors are plotting to emancipate us. The winds and tides are on our side, forever and ever, amen. The fire and rain are scheming to steal our pain. The sun and moon know our real names, and the animals pray for us while we’re dreaming. Do you believe in guardian angels and divine helpers? Whether you do or not, they’re always wangling to give you the gifts you don’t even realize you want. Can you guess how many humble humans are busy making things for you to use and enjoy?
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

Lame-duck U.S. President George Bush is mostly dreaming of his retirement these days, although he takes time out now and then to create executive orders that undo environmental protections. Barack Obama is planning hard for the monumental recovery he hopes to lead when he assumes the presidency, but his time won't come until January 20. Meanwhile, all the things that have been falling apart under Bush's watch are continuing to fall apart, only bigger and badder. Writes Josh Marshall in Talkingpointsmemo.com, "We're paying mightily for having no captain at the helm at one of the most perilous points in our recent national history." In regard to your own personal life, Cancerian, please avoid acting like America. Don't wait for some formal deadline before you make your moves. Expedite the transition from the old order to the new with the force of a thousand ecstatic activists.

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Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. The vast majority of everything is working with breathtaking efficiency and consistency. You would clearly be deluded to imagine that life is primarily an ordeal.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Leo (July 23-August 22)

"It's better to be clumsy than clever," says an ancient Chinese book called Poets' Jade Splinters, "better plain than affected, better crude than weak, better eccentric than vulgar." That's a good prescription for you to use in the way you live your life in the coming days, Leo. Here's another observation from the same text that should also be helpful: "Inspiration enters at the border between hard work and laziness." That suggests you've got to work hard and discipline yourself in order to earn the right to inspiration, but often the inspiration flows in when you're goofing off or giving yourself some slack.

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Push hard to get better, become smarter, grow your devotion to the truth, fuel your commitment to beauty, refine your emotional intelligence, hone your dreams, negotiate with your shadow, cure your ignorance, shed your pettiness, heighten your drive to look for the best in people, and soften your heart—even as you always accept yourself for exactly who you are with all of your so-called imperfections.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Virgo (August 23-September 22)

In 1952, renowned modern composer John Cage created the infamous "4'33"." It's a "song" that consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of pure silence. Recently a San Francisco performance artist, Jonathon Keats, did a remix of that tune and made it available as a ring-tone. I'd love for you to be inspired by those two geniuses in the coming week, Virgo. It'll be an excellent time for you to come to a perfect stop, fill yourself with stillness, and bask in the healing power of undiluted nothingness.

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What if the Creator is like Rainer Maria Rilke's God, "like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence"? What if the Source of All Life inhabits both the dark and the light, heals with strange splendor as much as with sweet insight, is hermaphroditic and omnisexual? What if the Source loves to give you riddles that push you past the boundaries of your understanding, forcing you to deepen your perceptions and change the way you think about everything? Close your eyes and imagine you can sense the presence of this tender, marvelous, difficult, entertaining intelligence.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Libra (September 23-October 22)

I urge you not to Google the word "duh," Libra. If you do, you'll mark yourself as a conformist trend-slave, joining over 33 million people who have already done it before you. Furthermore, you will be in danger of wasting the potential the cosmos is offering you, which is to reap rich rewards by exploring brave new frontiers on the edges of your awareness. So please be insanely curious about stuff you've never heard of and people you've never met. Research subjects that tantalize your imagination and stick your nose in where it supposedly doesn't belong. But don't Google "duh."

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If you've ever watched The Simpsons TV show, you've probably heard Homer Simpson's favorite toast. "To alcohol," he proclaims, "the cause of and solution to all of life's problems." My own salute is different. "To the Divine Trickster formerly known as God," I say, "the cause of and solution to all of life's problems." Compose a prayer in which you simultaneously curse and thank the Primal Source.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21)

Researchers have determined that you've got longer than you imagine to salvage food that has dropped on the floor. Bacteria don't get a foothold and start growing on your pizza or muffin for at least 30 seconds. Keep that in mind as an all-purpose metaphor in the coming days, Scorpio. Anything that you fear has already been spoiled or tainted may actually be possible to restore and redeem. You probably have more time than you thought.

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For some seekers, spiritual enlightenment is the ultimate commodity. They believe that through diligent meditation and self-improvement, there will come a day when it will no longer elude their grasp. Breaking through to the singular state of cosmic consciousness, they will forever after own it, free and clear. Permanently illuminated! Never to backslide into the dull ignominy of normal human awareness!

Here's what I have to say about that: It's a delusion.

The fact is, the nature of perfection is always mutating. What constitutes enlightenment today will always be different tomorrow. Even if you're fortunate and wise enough to score a sliver of "enlightenment," it's not a static treasure that becomes your indestructible, everlasting possession. Rather, it remains a mercurial knack that must be continually re-earned.

If you want to befriend the Divine Wow, you must not only be willing to change ceaselessly—you have to love to change ceaselessly.

Lucky you: All of creation is conspiring to help you live like that.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)

I got an invitation through MySpace to audition for an upcoming production of the "Vagina Monologues." While I was honored to be asked, I wasn't sure that the kind of audience members who would come to see the "Vagina Monologues" would want to hear me, a man, expound on the central topic. Upon reading the fine print, however, I found out that the producers were indeed seeking some male actors. The metaphorical moral of the story, Sagittarius, is to be open to invitations, opportunities, and requests that may at first seem odd, misdirected, or irrelevant.

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The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter. And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it’s impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be. That’s why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19)

From 1987 to 2006, Alan Greenspan was Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve and a major force in shaping the world's most powerful economy. When the recent troubles hit, Congress called on him to testify. With shocking humility, he confessed that there had been a flaw in his model of reality. All those years he'd believed that "free, competitive markets are by far the unrivaled way to organize economies." Now he saw he was wrong. While I'm sorry for the collective pain his mistaken ideas have unleashed, I'm elated for him personally: How many 82-year-old men are open to the possibility that their philosophy of life needs adjustment? For that matter, how many people of any age are receptive to changing their ideas about how the world works? I invite you to take your inspiration from Greenspan, Capricorn. Be curious about how your own major theories might need revision. Doing this heroic deed will energize you with good karma and fresh mojo.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson: "He who is in love is wise and becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses."
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Love, love, love: That is the soul of genius."
Krishnamurti: "The problem, if you love it, is as beautiful as the sunset."
Henry David Thoreau: "There is no remedy for love but to love more."
Erica Jong: "Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more."
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Aquarius (January 20- February 18)

What's the healthiest, holiest rebellion you could launch, Aquarius? What would be the most constructive way to channel your longing to live in a more perfect world? How might you overthrow the status quo in ways that would so thoroughly enhance the greater good that even the people bent on preserving the status quo would benefit? Given the fact that you are in a phase when your trouble-making skills are dovetailing very nicely with your ability to bestow blessings, these are excellent questions for you to consider.

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"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." So begins Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield. Buy a blank book and write that sentence at the top of page one.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.

Pisces (February 19-March 20)

A column in the Washington Post called "The Style Invitational" has identified the "Top 10 New Religions." I'm calling your attention to two that might be attractive to you in the coming months, a time when you'll probably have urges to transform and expand upon your spiritual practices. First, there are the Oxymormons, who engage in polygamous monogamy. The second group is the Salivationists. They speak in tongues like some other sects, but they also speak in drool. A third option, of course, is for you to whip up your own brand new, totally unique religion using just the parts you really like from all of the other traditions. However you do it, Pisces, I encourage you to be playfully creative as you get more disciplined about your relationship with the Divine Wow.

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Congratulations. Every cell in your perfect animal body is beginning to purr with luminous gratitude for the enormity of the riches you endlessly receive. You are becoming aware that each of your heart’s beats originates as a gift of love directly from the Goddess herself. Any residues of hatred that had been tainting your libido are leaving you for good. You are becoming telepathically linked to the world’s entire host of secret teachers, pacifist warriors, philosopher clowns, and bodhisattvas disguised as convenience store clerks.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Powells.